


pink lemonade

by failwoman



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Blow Jobs, Canonical Character Death, Cunnilingus, F/F, Face-Sitting, Pining, Slow Burn, Vaginal Fingering, blupjeans in the most mean disrespectful way, dramatic tonal shifts, dyke drama, happy ending...for now, lesbians who have sex together lovingly, lup has ptsd, scare quotes blupjeans end scare quotes, two-handed journal writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 08:48:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11437356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failwoman/pseuds/failwoman
Summary: It’s the next morning, her mouth bone dry and her stomach unsteady and Lup snoring under her cheek, that Lucretia remembers an oversight the size of a fucking planet. She squeezes her eyes shut and pictures it. Her journal, lying prone and unprotected on the side table in the living room, pen left where she stopped writing to mark the page where she went on a pathetic rant about the very girl sleeping beneath her. A girl who, for all her kissing and touching and cuddling, didn’t give Lucretia much more physical attention than anyone else as far as she could tell.





	pink lemonade

**Author's Note:**

> hi yall, my corpse couldn't rest until i churned this out
> 
> my ADD is so bad that i can’t tell if how much i misunderstand the actual plot of taz is because i didn’t listen or if it’s stuff that’s actually never been mentioned, and it's for this reason that, for all i stole from canon, the timeline on this is seriously fucky. HOWEVER, i'm not out here trying to get the nobel prize for literature...i'm out here rubbing my greasy lesbo hands on lup and barry's...thing
> 
> peace! enjoy

_Lup is the sun. This is melodramatic, but hear me out._

_She smells perpetually of sunshine, even on worlds where there is very little. Her hair, eyes, skin, all bright, all glow from the inside. She radiates fire at will, which is not even a metaphor._

_She is full of energy that no one has the technology to properly measure yet. This energy manifests in nervous pacing, outbursts of emotion, and unconditional warmth toward anything she finds worthy. She’s both the strongest and most empathetic person I’ve ever met._

_I will, however, cut the melodrama by saying that this evening at dinner, she burped loudly, leaned back in her chair, and patted her stomach, not unlike Fantasy Larry the Cable Guy. For all her candor, I’ve never known her for her tact._

“Luuuuuucy…,” comes the sing-songy voice that Lucretia has come to know so well.

Lucretia snaps her journal closed, pen between the pages to hold her place, and looks up at Lup swaying over to her, bottle of wine in hand.

“Whatcha writin’?” Lup giggles, already reaching toward Lucretia’s closed journal with her free hand.

Lucretia holds it over her own head and slightly behind her, Lup’s hand barely finding purchase on the smooth, leather cover before being slid off with the movement. “It’s private,” Lucretia says with a tiny frown.

She’s finding it hard to be mad, because now Lup is leaning over Lucretia, her cleavage mere inches away from Lucretia’s face. Lucretia holds her breath. The moment is broken when Lup leans down, knees bent, pointy face turned up in a sprightly grin. The alcohol has left smudges of red under the dark skin of her cheeks. When she giggles directly into Lucretia’s face, her breath smells like the wine, which smells a bit like socks but mostly like sugar.

“I’m sorry, then,” she says, kissing Lucretia’s nose playfully and leaning up. She stumbles a bit when she does, but holds out her hand. “You should come hang with us, though. It’s our last night. We survived! And Barold is _crazy_ wasted. You’ve gotta see it. Him and Taako almost kissed. It’s buckwild out there.”

Lucretia has to put that thought away immediately; still in her feelings, she says, “You know this is hell, right, and there’s no last anything? Like, you know that.”

Lup lets out a huff and grabs her hand, tugging on it in suggestion. “Please come have fun. Play with me.”

Lucretia finally lowers her book to the side table, glancing at the door to the mess hall, where Magnus’ laughter is more or less shaking the metal walls of the Starblaster. Lup reads her hesitance to socialize.

“For me?”

Lucretia ignores her batting eyelashes and allows herself to be pulled upright, where Lup immediately threads their fingers together and kisses her cheek. “You’ll see!”

“I forgot how much I needed to see Taako end Barry’s life.” Lucretia heaves a dramatic sigh even as she smiles.

Lup’s laugh fills up Lucretia’s bones with light.

-

It’s the next morning, her mouth bone dry and her stomach unsteady and Lup snoring under her cheek, that Lucretia remembers an oversight the size of a fucking planet. She squeezes her eyes shut and pictures it. Her journal, lying prone and unprotected on the side table in the living room, pen left where she stopped writing to mark the page where she _went on a pathetic rant_ about the very girl sleeping beneath her. A girl who, for all her kissing and touching and cuddling, didn’t give Lucretia much more physical attention than anyone else as far as she could tell.

Opening her eyes again is the last thing she wants to do. Immediately, she starts rampaging through explanatory thoughts, trying to clean up the mess she’s imagining before it can ruin her. She explains it away. Everyone else was pretty hammered, too. It’s still pretty early. As far as Lucretia remembers, everyone eventually made it back to their own dorms okay (herself being the exception). Maybe no one’s even seen it. Maybe the living room has been empty in the eight or so hours since she left it there.

Lucretia steels herself to get out of bed. Her and Lup are stuck together with clammy sweat on every square inch of them that touches, save for their ridden-up shirts, which have their own quality of being soaking wet in the space between them. Lup’s hand on her waist alone is generating enough heat to give Lucretia a panic attack. Her face feels unnaturally hot when she scrapes it off Lup’s shoulder, and Lup gives a dissatisfied, sleepy hum when Lucretia removes her hand and positions it on her own stomach.

As she moves to get up, she looks back down at Lup, sleeping, and makes the decision that kissing her shoulder in her sleep would be creepy.

And so, uncomfortably braless and taking a stumbling first few steps, Lucretia takes her uniform boots and robes and creeps to the hallway. Unfortunately, she is still drunk. _C’est la vie_.

She leaves her pile of clothes outside her own dorm, door cracked open to reveal it as empty and dark. The hallway is so cold with Lup and her own sweat rapidly drying on her.

She passes the kitchen without incident—nothing in there lit but the oven light—and peeks into the common room. Things look…undisturbed. She breathes a sigh of relief to see no one in the room, and then her heart falls to her fucking toes when she looks at the end table to reveal absolutely nothing.

“God. Shit. Oh my god.”

“You rang?” The voice coming from the kitchen she thought previously unoccupied is very annoying, and very amused, and it makes her jump.

Lucretia pads cautiously toward Taako’s voice. She feels like she’s going to the guillotine, for real and for true. So much for surviving this cycle.

Closer inspection reveals that Taako—hair in a high ponytail and nursing a mug of something—is sitting at the table, feet kicked up where everyone _eats_ , browsing through her journal like how he’d peruse a trashy Harlequin novel or the Sunday paper.

He smirks at her.

“I didn’t, actually,” she replies, squaring her shoulders despite the warmth rising in her cheeks. She thinks about how much he’s seen, images of what she’s recorded in there flickering through her mind.

He whistles lowly and raises an eyebrow down at the pages. “Hachi machi, sis, I didn’t think this was going to be much of anything when I picked it up, but you really blew that out of the water.”

“I do my best.” He’s already read it. There’s nothing she can do but make the walk of shame to the coffee maker and ignore his eyes on her back as she pours herself a mug.

“Like, I know you know I’ve gotten my hands on one of these puppies before, and it was a total snore. Like, I was there to see alien dudes get blasted and that kind of thing.” He hums as she sits down in the chair beside him and props his chin on his fist while he looks at her. “But I was _not_ there for your bleeding _heart_ , Luc, be still my—“

Lucretia holds up a hand. “I’m not even getting into the invasion of privacy half of this—“

“Leaving it out where little ol’ me could just pick it up isn’t exactly _privacy_ , my dude,” Taako pipes in.

“—and I’m not going to make excuses and say it was a joke or something—“

Taako tilts the journal so she can see a sketch she’d drawn of Lup grinning her biggest. “I _knooow_ you’re such a good actor and stuff, e-t-c, e-t-c—“ spelled out loud, god “—but those strands of _sunlit hair_ are so lovingly detailed—“

“—but Taako, I just want to ask for your…discretion.”

He grins so she can see all his crooked teeth. “This is way too juicy and delish to keep to myself. This kind of art needs to be shared with the world.”

Lucretia concentrates on the ball of frustration in her chest that feels like a big, stupid, hot coal, and pictures a jug of water pouring over it and cooling it. She exhales very carefully. In through the nose, one, two, three, four, hold, one, two, three, four, out through the mouth, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

“Please just…” Lucretia huffs. “Just do me this favor, once.”

Taako keeps giggling until he sees her expression. His eyebrows knit together. “You know how Barold feels about her.”

Ah, yes, just the knife Lucretia was in the mood to get stabbed with so early in the day. “Yes.” Her cup of coffee is becoming so interesting.

“Last I got the memo they were still an i _tem_ , so to speak,” he says, and Lucretia can’t bring herself to look at his face, but the way he stresses the second syllable of “item” is annoying, so she chews on that instead.

“Yes.” She regulates her voice very carefully.

“And you’re okay with that?” His tone is a bit softer, now.

“I mean…” What does she mean? Barry is dead fucking serious about Lup, whether Lucretia _or_ her want to admit it or not. You don’t watch someone for fifteen-plus years and then just let the feeling pass like heartburn. She should know.

She must take too long to continue her sentence, because Taako urges her with a high-pitched, “Yeah?”

“Look, okay,” Lucretia grips her mug and finds it in herself to meet his eyes. He looks so much like her, just a little sharper around the edges, blonde hair having more lowlights and no hints of dyed pink, missing a few of her crucial freckles. The shirt falling off his shoulder, though, is Lup’s, and she’s so desperate to communicate, to vent, that Lucretia can delude herself into thinking it’s Lup she’s telling this to.

“I was what, like, twenty-four when this started? You think I’ve never liked a girl who had a boyfriend? That’s like, the hallmark of the lesbian experience. You think I’ve never been here before? I can deal, okay?”

His perpetual smirk falls a bit at the corners, and his sharp eyebrows look confused and concerned. “Lucretia…” She hates the softness in his voice.

“What?” she snaps involuntarily.

He glances back down at the page where his sister has been, in his words, so _lovingly detailed_ , and very carefully closes the cover of her journal, setting it down in front of her. Miraculously, he even removes his feet from the table and sits up properly to speak to her.

“The shit in there sounds really serious,” he says in a careful tone of voice.

Lucretia snorts. “Uh-huh.”

Like a band aid that just won’t stop being ripped off, Taako keeps talking. “Like, more than crush levels of serious, like, pining levels, like _ell-oh-vee-ee_ levels.”

“I don’t know what makes you think that I want to hear this,” Lucretia says in disbelief, shaking her head as if she’s in a stupor.

Taako, ever his sister’s brother, keeps barreling forward. “But you _need_ to hear it. I don’t wanna crush your game or anything, babe, but I don’t want you to get hurt, either.”

“I never knew how much you cared.” Lucretia finds it in herself to smirk at him, and Taako’s eyebrows pull together, but he returns the expression.

Lucretia wishes that, after all the planes of reality they’ve been to, they’d happened to have fallen into one where this conversation went differently. Taako reading her journal, sure, and going, “Oh, don’t you know she feels the same?” and Lucretia being filled with confidence to pursue her, and so on and so forth. She watches the coffee grounds swirl in the quarter-inch of liquid left in her mug and thinks about how it’s a bad sign that Taako, who knows Lup better than anyone, didn’t have any secret truth to tell Lucretia, or any better or more hopeful answer at all whatsoever, for that matter. A hand sits on her throat, waiting to choke her if she dares to say something stupid like _Does she care about me?_

He stands with a flourish, kicking the chair behind him and tightening his ponytail. “No one ever appreciates me when I try to be nice,” he gripes, standing on one foot to itch his other leg with his toes. “Oh _Taako’s so bitchy_ this, _Taako’s two-faced_ that. Like, I’m trying over here.”

Lucretia stares up at him. “Will you keep it to yourself?”

Taako makes a face like he’s clearly evaluating the pros and cons in his head. She’s relieved when he stops on a “Yes,” and turns on his heel to get himself another cup of coffee.

“Thank you,” she breathes. She tries to draw her knees up to her chest in the chair, but it’s too small and her thighs are too fat, so she really just ends up pressing her knees to the edge of the table and lounging.

“No prob,” he says, casting some stupid cantrip to heat the coffee back up, prestidigitating the vanilla creamer he likes. “You want another cup?”

“No, I’m good,” she replies, watching him. “I forgot to ask…Why are you even up?”

“I don’t need to sleep, bubbele. Elf, remember?”

“No, but you _like_ to sleep.” Just like Lup.

She notices the exhaustion in his eyes when he grins his most blinding best and says, “Can’t get up if you never go to sleep, pumpkin.”

She sees through it. “The cycles make me nervous, too.”

“It’s the waiting,” he says easily, flippantly, like he wasn’t so scared he lost a night of sleep over it and then refused to confide in anyone about it, even Lup, even Magnus.

“Can I help out at all?”

Taako snorts like she just said the most ridiculous thing in the world. “I’ll be fine.”

Typical. Lucretia smiles and sits up from the table, grabbing her journal on the way. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Hopefully I’ll sleep through it and when I wake up, we’ll be somewhere else.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, and moves to sit back down. “Take my only source of entertainment and bounce, I see how it is.”

“Goodnight, Taako. Thank you.”

“No need, hakuna matata, all that.” He waves a hand and does what she thinks is his best to look very occupied by his own nails.

When she returns to her room, she realizes that Taako must have stolen her good pen. She kicks the clothes she left outside into the doorway and trips over boots and books and wands to her bedside table, switching on her lamp. She throws herself onto the bed in a way that her mom yelled at her for in her youth and places the journal on the pillow beside her. As Lucretia stares at it, she wishes she could set it on fire and forget the way she feels. She wishes she wasn’t so mad at Barry for something that wasn’t his fault; she wishes that the thought of Lup spread eagle sleeping in the other room didn’t twist her stomach into knots.

She sits up ramrod straight and fishes around in her nightstand for a new pen, and opens the journal, trying not to look at her sketches and previous writings about Lup. She’s embarrassed that they were even visible to someone else, much less that they’d already been seen. She fares better pretending they don’t exist.

Licking her thumb, she flicks to a new page.

_It’s currently 6:36 A.M. If we counted correctly, yesterday was the last day of the fifteenth cycle, and we should be moving into the sixteenth any minute now. This was a lucky one—all of us survived._

She takes her time chronicling a short summary of the last year they spent on this planet, inhabited mainly by big-eyed, nonverbal reptiles who liked being underground so much that they didn’t seem to even notice the Light had been near their biggest settlement. The proximity didn’t help them in the end. They failed as always; watching their planet be swallowed was hard, and knowing the creatures were waiting beneath the earth for something they didn’t even understand to kill them was harder.

Lucretia makes sure to give the most important detail some spotlight.

 _When the Hunger finally came, in those last few moments where I was the only one who refused to leave, Lup stayed with me. She helped me shoo them underground in the vain hope that maybe the Hunger would only take what was on the surface. It advanced on us, taking the Light of Creation but also all the other light from the skies nearby, and I’ve never been a good runner. Lup was the one who grabbed my hand and screamed for me to hurry up, to_ Come on, Lucy _, and Taako, who hadn’t been able to bring himself to go all the way onto the ship without her no matter how stupid he thought her plan was, ran the last few feet with us. Magnus and Barry helped haul us into the ship just as the Hunger took everything._

_Now we’re drifting, and waiting. One of these is going to be the last one. The cycles have to stop eventually. I didn’t know that fifteen years could feel like this._

_Oh, and Taako read everything I wrote about Lup in here, and_

She makes the executive decision to very decisively scratch that last line out. She isn’t dignifying her foolish feelings, or her stupid conversation with Taako, or worst of all, Lup and Barry’s quiet relationship. If she dies forever tomorrow, if the cycle never resets and their ship ends up empty and barren and spaced and washed up on some planet of the apes in a thousand years, that’s not what she wants recorded for posterity.

Bitter as she sounds, Lucretia knows the biggest reason she’d never tell Lup the way she felt was not a fear of rejection, but a show of respect. Lup does what Lup wants. If Lup wanted Lucretia, Lucretia would know; if Lup wants to be with Barry, then she’s made her decision, and it wouldn’t be anything but manipulative for Lucretia to pursue her under those conditions. Even worse would be for her to completely make an ass of herself pouring unrequited feelings out to Lup.

She closes the journal gently and clicks the light out. For all the drama Taako raised about the contents of her journal, Lucretia has made a point to never mention her own feelings on the pages. Of course they come across—death of the author is impossible in this scenario—but she isn’t a teenager taking her pining out on an impartial notebook. She’s not venting; she’s doing her job. Whoever finds her journals someday deserves to know Lup. If they can never make it to a facsimile of home, if they lose each other in the end, Lucretia needs to know there’s a snapshot of Lup to make home. As she closes her eyes, she concentrates all her energy on imaging Lup is in bed beside her and waits for the cycle to end.

-

Mercifully, she’s somewhere new when she wakes up. Though time is meaningless, her clock says it’s well after noon, and in the kitchen, Lup—having slept uninterrupted, but still a late riser—is sitting with Taako, both in full uniform now. When he flicks his gaze up to her, his face betrays nothing of the new information he has about her.

Maybe this will be okay.

Lup, bright-eyed and bushy-haired as ever, grins at her warmly and gestures to the seat between her and her brother. “Good morning! I made you a plate on the stove.” When Lucretia smiles at her in acknowledgment, Lup returns to her lively conversation with Taako, speaking with her hands the way she always does.

Lucretia sits between them carefully and starts to cut into the huge, fluffy pancakes that were most likely Lup’s doing from the strawberries atop them.

“What are we supposed to think about that fungus, though? Like, what the fuck?”

“You act like I’ve been here any longer than you, Lulu,” Taako replies, acquiescent to what is obviously not a real question but rather Lup’s usual verbal processing.

She puts her forehead in her open palm, running her fingers through her long, fluffy hair from hairline to ends. “You haven’t even seen it yet, have you, Lucy?”

Lucretia’s mouth is full to an unfortunate extent when she forgets her manners and says, “What?”

Taako snorts at her but Lup doesn’t even seem to notice. “The new planet. You’ve been asleep, right?”

“Yeah, some of us have to do that.”

Lup kicks her leg gently under the table and smiles. “When you’re done, do you wanna go out and see it?”

Lucretia swallows this time before answering. “Sure.”

-

_We’re for sure in the sixteenth cycle now. This new world we’re in is…incredible. It’s inhabited by vaguely humanoid creatures, all seven feet tall or more. They were very genial; I’m looking forward to writing about their habits, customs, language, relationships, and society in the future. For now, they allowed us to eat some of their food, communicating well enough through hand gestures. They showed us their cities, vast and beautiful, technologically advanced. Even better, though, was the natural world that surrounded them…Fields of grass, purples and pinks, giant bioluminescent mushrooms…Flowers stories tall, shading us in their huge petals. The water is clear, fresh, untouched by pollution. It cascades down waterfalls. Lup took me to the very top of one at sunset. There are three suns that take their time leisurely setting, and Lup talked in length about her homeworld, which had two. We put our feet in the cool water, feeling the tiny, deeply intelligent fish swim around them, checking them out like a cat would sniff your hand before nudging it to be pet._

-

As time passes, Lucretia gets very good at putting her feelings in a box. She is a good friend and confidant to not just Lup, but to everyone on the ship, her compatriots whose love for one another keeps a fuel-less ship in the sky. She is damn good at her job of chronicling their journey. Each day she wakes thinking she’ll be bored of it, but each day her hand aches with or without her pen in it, and the thought process behind writing down the events of her life just as much as living in them is stamped in her brain permanently.

If Lup and Barry truly are in a relationship, they don’t say anything. Taako, true to his word to a fault, never brings things up again. It’s been twenty-something years since her conversation with him that morning. The objects around her are the only things that show age, and the journal he’d taken from her smells of age now. It’s something hard to comprehend another fifteen years later, when the pages are yellowed and even the ink she used to sketch Lup is fading. She opens it up one day, and thinks about how time, for them, a vortex she feels permanently is lost in. If it weren’t for this fading picture of Lup laughing, eyes bright and alive even on paper, Lucretia would think time has stop existing entirely.

The weight of their countless failures bear down everyone’s shoulders, even Lup’s. She has the same life in her eyes, still, but her smiles fade quicker, her eyes getting lost in what is clearly dark thought in conversational lulls. Lucretia watches as Barry tries and fails to carry the weight of her grief. Whether they’re _together_ or not, the way he looks at her is obvious and always has been. He looks helpless now.

-

Lucretia is surprised how long it takes for there to be a reality in which Lup dies and she doesn’t. She’s so used to the cycles of death, surviving some, watching her friends die other times. Lucretia has never long outlived Lup before, never felt anything more than what she would probably feel had things been normal and Lup had a busy work week in which they couldn’t talk.

In year fifty-one, Lucretia watches Lup bleed out in a field of flowers. Barry got to her first, and it’s his lap her head is in as Merle fails to heal her in time. “Fails” is the wrong word; it’s not his fault, but that doesn’t stop him from looking despondent in the weeks afterward. Lup is everyone’s sunshine. Lucretia falls to her knees on the other side of her, Taako on the other side, and they each held onto Lup as she slowly let go. Lucretia wishes Lup’s death had been quicker; Lucretia knows how much she’s hurt in her life. Barry kisses her forehead, his tears falling onto her cheeks, yet it’s Lucretia Lup looks at right before she goes. They hold each other’s wrists, more secure that way, Lucretia feeling her slowing pulse under her fingers. Lup’s grip on her is so vital and strong until it isn’t anymore.

Everyone sits on the ship, silent, intact even after failure, except for one. Lucretia pulls up the sleeve of her robe and stares down at her wrist, smudged with Lup’s blood, and thinks about the long, long wait between cycles. She wishes Magnus hadn’t physically carried her back to the ship. She wishes Taako’s magic missile had hit; she wishes she was more proficient in healing, and that Merle hadn’t run out of spell slots.

She looks up and sitting across from her, Taako gazes blankly at nothing in particular. It makes her feel like a snot-nosed brat; they are each other’s hearts, after all. Lucretia doesn’t know where her sniveling is supposed to fit into the unimaginable loss of losing your reflection, a vital limb, a lifetime partner.

At the same time, Barry stares at his own lap, eyes unfocused, jaw set tight, hands wringing. There are many an occasion where she’s died without him; Lucretia wouldn’t know what he acted like in those moments, but he’s taking it better than she guesses he could be taking it.

Lucretia can’t put her finger on the absolute devastation wreaking havoc inside of her. Who is she to Lup, to feel this way? Not her girlfriend, her partner, her twin. What gives her the right to look at someone like Barry, who was the one to kiss her at the end, and feel a clawing in her gut to tell him to _get over it_? She tries not to be angry…She tries so hard not to be angry.

Lup will regenerate; she knows this. She’ll wake up in a new body in a mere…two-hundred days. But in the meantime, she thinks about the Lup they left in the field, and the way the sunshine bled out of her fingertips when she passed. Memories don’t stay on their bodies. She can’t look at her face in the mirror and poke her full lips, thinking about all the times she’d given Lup kisses on her cheeks, her nose, her forehead some thirty-ish years ago. They weren’t the same lips. She wasn’t the same, and she hadn’t kissed Lup in a long time.

-

When Lup comes back, she first kisses Taako, who is still such a sensitive person after everything, and despite his attitude, he cries every time she comes back. Two mirror images in so many ways, she brushes his bangs back. They embrace for a long time, while Lucretia stands a few feet back with Barry.

He’s next. Lucretia looks away when they kiss on the lips, yet Barry doesn’t look away when Lup kisses her on cheek softly for the first time in almost forty years.

-

Year fifty-two is a godsend. The sun is hot and the sand beneath Lucretia’s toes feels so much like her home planet, lost to who knows how much time, that it feels like a knife going through her throat to her heart. When they all step off the ship to miles and miles of coast, an infinite distance of clear, crystalline-blue water, a sigh of cautious relief echoes among all of them.

Not three hours after their arrival, three hours of scouting to find nothing but paradise, Lup is the one who complains, “What are we _doing_? It’s nine-hundred _degrees_ ,” as she puts her hair up. Lucretia watches a few strands cling to the back of Lup’s neck with sweat.

“Seconded,” Taako says, obviously, handing Lup a claw clip from god knows where that she uses to help him put his hair up in a bun not unlike her own. He fans himself.

Lucretia’s hair is shorn short and she didn’t bother to put her robes on when she left. Somewhere, distantly, she realizes that it _is_ hot, and the sun doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.

“We should go swimming,” Lup says, easy as pie.

Davenport shoots her a look, but Magnus goes, “Yes!” and hops in place like a child, and Taako’s eyes glint with mischief. Barry looks like he’s thinking nothing at all, something that’s become commonplace in the last few days.

Clearly outnumbered, Davenport sighs in defeat. “Okay,” he says, and when Magnus and Taako high-five he offers a strong-worded, “ _but_ , we will stay close to the ship, and we have to keep our gear nearby, okay? And someone has to stay on guard.”

Barry volunteers himself immediately. Lucretia can’t read the look on Lup’s face when he does.

“Oh, lighten up.” Merle elbows Davenport, who blushes—a can of worms that Lucretia, as much as she loves her friends, doesn’t think it’s in her best interest to open, ever.

Barry quickly says, “No, it’s fine,” and he’s already walking away, to somewhere between the ship and the shore.

“What’s crawled up _his_ ass?” Merle says, scratching his beard absently.

Magnus looks genuinely worried, something not unusual. “Is he okay?”

Lup doesn’t say anything, even though everyone looks to her for the answer. Taako, quickly picking up the slack, offers a lighthearted, “Barold will be fine. It’s _way_ more important that I get in this very good pool that Pan gave us, isn’t that right, Maggie?” Lucretia feels like she can see the worry Magnus had just a moment ago tumble out of his ears like so much smoke when Taako touches his arm to guide him away from the group and to the shore.

Merle shrugs and lets it go quietly after that, him and Davenport going the way Taako and Magnus went. Lup is still watching Barry vacantly when Lucretia steps over to her, carefully, like she’ll spook.

“Lup…?” she tries, and Lup snaps to consciousness like a rubber band. Her grin doesn’t touch her eyes.

“Let’s go, then,” she says, grabbing Lucretia’s hand and guiding her down to the coast.

-

Lucretia doesn’t have enough hands to count the sunsets, each different suns, that she’s watched with Lup at her side. Lup’s hair is flung carelessly to one shoulder as she finger-combs it back to something resembling normality. Lucretia attempts to palm her own hair back into place; the short curls, already struck white from the neuroses of their owner, don’t need much suggesting, luckily.

Lucretia sticks her legs out in front of her, watches the waves wash over them and bathe them in the reflected warmth of the sunset. It’s hard to describe the color of the reds mixed with her dark skin, but it makes her legs look like they’re on fire. She sits in silence.

Everyone else has gone further up the beach as Taako fries fish in some fancy magical way. There’s no one within a couple hundred feet of them; their caution wore off long ago, with no sign of the Hunger _or_ the Light or anything resembling predators. Lup throws her head back and sighs dramatically.

Lucretia raises an eyebrow in her direction.

“It’s nice that my infinitely regenerating garbage body can never get skin cancer,” Lup mumbles, eyes closing, shoulders drooping. “I love the sun.”

“Agreed,” Lucretia says.

“Was there a lot of sun where you grew up?”

Lucretia closes her eyes and pictures being ten. She wasn’t far from the beach herself in those days. Briefly, she is transported, and the sun beating on her eyelids is the same as her home.

“There was where I was,” Lup answers herself. Lucretia opens her eyes and rolls her head on her shoulders to look at her. Lup bites her lip, twirling the decorative string hanging off the side of her bathing suit skirt absently. “When me and Taak were babies, our aunt would have to scream at us to come in every night, cause we’d be out in the clearing by her house playing with the animals or practicing magic or whatever. We’d never wanna go inside. Whenever the sun set, I’d just hold a little fire in my hand—I was so shitty at magic back then!—and Taako would always look at me like I invented it or some shit.”

Lucretia smiles, sweet and easy. Her father was a writer and her mother was a painter by trade, though both were wizards; Lup knows this. “We lived right next to the beach when I was a kid,” she says softly. “Since they were artists, they didn’t really need to go anywhere. We conjured our own food. We had everything we needed. I swam every day.”

Lup sighs. “That sounds so nice. I love the water.”

“So do I,” Lucretia agrees. The conversation drops naturally into a calm silence.

“This situation sucks.”

Lucretia hums in question, and Lup lays down beside her, stretching out her legs in a way that has to be showing off, because they look like they could be double the length of Lucretia’s.

“It sucks that whenever we talk about things like that with each other, everyone knows that it’s past tense,” Lup explains, frowning, eyes still closed. “Well, not just past tense in that our homes were destroyed, because obviously, but even before that…The good stuff in our pasts ended before that, or we wouldn’t be here.”

Lucretia nods even though Lup isn’t looking at her. “You don’t take this job if you have something to come home to.”

“Taako was the only thing I ever had to come home to,” Lup says quietly, and Lucretia comes to understand a lot in just a moment, why her and Taako seem so calm in a situation that brings some of the other party members to their knees on occasion. “He’s home to me?” she says, like a question, and Lucretia realizes that having a person or people be their only home was something Taako and Lup were used to in a way that none of the rest of them were. While Lucretia missed a place in her bones, a place called home filled with people she loved, Lup got to take her home with her, a home that wanted for nothing, included everything it had always included for her. There wasn’t much for her to adjust to, comparatively.

“I never would have come on a mission like this without him.” Lup’s voice is very serious, stating a fact and not something so subjective as her feelings for her brother.

Lucretia’s _very_ subjective emotions come to clog her throat and rob her of words. She places her hand on Lup’s forearm that rests spread out in the space between them. When Lup’s brilliant green eyes open, Lucretia is already gazing at them.

Lup smirks up at her, but doesn’t shrug her hand off. “It’s been weird to watch him start to care about someone other than me.” She scoffs. “Hell, it’s been weird to watch _me_ care about people other than him.”

Though she can see the sardonic walls inside Lup try to go up, Lucretia keeps her gaze very soft. “All of you are home to me now.”

Lup’s eyes crinkle at the edges, sharp, thick brows drawing together to make a little divot. “See, that’s the kind of sappy shit we never get to hear when you’re always up in your head like you do.”

Lucretia can feel her mouth twist. “What are you talking about? I’m perfectly sociable.” It’s old criticism for her, or she wouldn’t even care to argue.

Lup twists her arm to take Lucretia’s hand in hers, moving their joined hands up until she’s pressing Lucretia’s palm against her own face, Lup’s comparatively warm fingers curled between her own. She frees her index and middle fingers to tap on Lucretia’s temple.

“Fuckin’ nerd,” she giggles with absolutely no malice. “You don’t even know.”

Lucretia can feel one side of her mouth pull up involuntarily into a crooked smile. “No, I don’t, actually.”

“You’re so smart,” Lup whispers, sitting up. “You’re always observing. You’re always evaluating shit. Maybe not everyone sees it, but I don’t know how someone could think you’re ‘just quiet’ after fifty years of knowing you.” The tapping fingers move to stroke instead, and Lucretia’s face feels inexplicably hot. “Even when we can’t handle our own shit, or when we don’t want to handle it, you’re out here writing it down, good and bad. I can see you formulating what you’re going to say. That brain of yours doesn’t miss a thing.”

Lup’s eyes are bright and soft; they reflect hues of gold, feather-duster lashes blinking. Ethereally beautiful in an elven way, but mostly just in a _Lup_ way. Lucretia has to look away; she’s never felt so _seen_ before. The light glints off all the dozen earrings up and down Lup’s long ears.

“Don’t tell me no one’s ever told you that,” Lup says in disbelief.

Lucretia coughs in some weird nervous tick. “No, it’s not that…”

“You have to know that about yourself.”

“Oh, trust me, I do.”

Lup’s smiles, amusement and some unnamable emotion, and the synergy it has with the language her eyes speak is something too sharp for Lucretia to wrap her heart around.

“A lot of times people stop at ‘nerd,’ that’s all,” Lucretia explains, laughing lightly.

“Well, they aren’t getting the whole picture, but they aren’t lying, either,” Lup giggles, and Lucretia sees…several things, all at once. Lup pulls her knees together and to the side, angling her whole body in Lucretia’s direction. At the same time, her fingers tighten on Lucretia’s cheek ever-so-slightly, and their lips part in sync with one another. Lucretia sees Lup’s eyes land on her open lips. Lup’s tongue peeks out, swiping over her bitten bottom lip; the top one is fuller than the bottom, Lucretia knows, and the gap between Lup’s big front teeth is the cutest thing Lucretia has ever seen. Sunlit energy seeps through Lup’s fingers and into Lucretia, warming her cheeks through to her heart and stomach, tingling up and down the backs of her thighs and between her legs, singing all the way to her toes.

Lucretia realizes with a start that she’s in a very bad way, and that everyone they know (all five of them) is within glancing distance of this whole ordeal. While Lup is the last one on earth to know shame, Lucretia regrettably is the first.

With all her instincts to just _kiss_ her screaming in tandem, and the logical voice in the forefront of her mind screaming even louder that Lup’s boyfriend is in his feelings a mere fifty feet away, Lucretia does the last thing she wants to do: she pulls away.

Lup looks…hurt? She looks like _something_. When Lucretia’s hand falls away from her face, Lup lets go without a fuss. She looks away like the gradually calming tide is the most interesting thing she’s ever seen. The sun is almost gone, now.

Taako’s high-pitched voice rings out, “ _Lup!_ ” from some distance away. The food is probably done. Lucretia watches Lup fold her long legs up under herself, dusting the sand from her wet skirt and wagging her hair like a dog, and Lup never looks at her. Lucretia abruptly feels like in all her effort to do right, she’s done something _so_ wrong. Okay. That’s a fun feeling.

Lucretia is nothing if not logical. Taako obviously knows something is up immediately, and Barry is only sitting with them to eat by the loosest definition. Lup acts like everything is normal, save for her existing in an alternate universe where Lucretia and Barry don’t exist. She props her feet up in Magnus’ lap and drops bits of fish in her mouth like a queen without an entourage to do it for her. Lucretia eats in silence, engaging in conversation only when addressed, and wants nothing more than to get back to her room to _write_.

She remembers fondly the days when her stacks of journals were expressly _not for venting_ her feelings.

-

The extent to which the beach planet is relaxing only goes so far as how the team can enjoy each other’s company there, and that is a variable that is slowly but surely going down in value, bringing the overall _relaxometer_ to a roughly…negative number. Things are “decidedly un-chill,” in Taako’s words, and “What the hell got into all of you?” He says that last one like he isn’t the only one who knows.

Taako has been giving Lucretia looks the past couple days. Nowadays, she has the tendency to stay away from the crowd, writing quietly in her journals for hours on end. She takes breaks to float in the water and stare up at the perpetually-cloudless green sky and pretend that there are no people, or feelings, or bodies, and that she’s just a ball of light floating on a wave, going wherever she’s taken. Balls of non-sentient light don’t have boxes inside them, aren’t veritable Matryoshka dolls of unexamined emotions. As much as she feels like Lup is the center of her problems, there’s probably an even smaller doll inside of where she keeps Lup; probably her gifted childhood loneliness or something stupid like that.

As the stretch since the last time she spoke to Lup yawns wider and wider, Lucretia is forced to take peeks in that box every now and then. Whatever she keeps in there is blinding to look at and spills out from the edges in those quiet moments, prying itself free like a bunch of glowing hands are fighting Lucretia shoving them back inside. Whatever it is fills her up not just with the pain of fifty years of unrequited something-or-other, but also with something so terrifying as hope.

It’s a mental image of her and Lup, somewhere far away from all of this, from the Hunger and impotent immortality. It’s her finally being able to grow her hair back out; it’s Lup helping her comb it every day until it’s long enough, putting her feet in Lucretia’s lap and watching and making quips through the process of dreading it. It’s dinners made together every night ad infinitum. It’s an overweight cat sleeping between them in bed, back in a world where cats exist. It’s waking up early to take a walk in the forest beside their home and not having to come back any time in particular; it’s a shower together afterwards where Lup presses up behind her, soft skin and soft hips and soft breasts, and leaves kisses up and down her neck, fingers inside her. It’s never missing Lup, not for a second…It’s falling asleep peacefully in her arms knowing that if something comes bump in the night, it’ll have to answer to the volcanoes her girlfriend can just _make_ , no problem, don’t even sweat it.

 _Girlfriend._ Huh. How about that.

When she opens the box ever-so-slightly to tuck that one away in there, the claws that try to get free in their moment of opportunity seem sharper than ever. Lucretia is weightless. She is a ball of light on a cloud, or the waves, the sea, whatever. She’s just a wandering soul that has no idea where it is at any given time.

After a week or so, things lighten up. Barry can look people in the eye again—a good talent to keep under your belt, in Lucretia’s opinion—and Lup is starting to talk to her again as if nothing happened. They have a good time on the beach planet. They’re a family, and for this cycle, they’re going to have a good time in the interlude between watching each other die and fearing for the concept of existence itself.

-

 _It’s cycle sixty-five. It’s hard to wrap my head around how many years that is, especially that it’s not just some abstract number and it’s something_ I _, myself,_ personally _, have lived through. The planet we’re on is so normal, so much like home that it’s shocking. There are_ people _here, and we’ve been to places with humanoids and intelligent life over and over but this place has humans, and elves, and dwarves. They have a school, a huge one like the wizard’s college I attended what, like, seventy years ago? What an alum. All they do here is they create, they create and create and create original ideas and music and art and philosophy and words and feed those ideas to a cave. I’ve never seen anything like one of these recitals, where a book is passed into the passageway and its contents are suddenly in my head, in the heads of everyone around me._

_We’ve been chosen, each of us, to participate. They’re listening to our pleas to find the Light, and in turn, we’re each going to create something to present to it. Not to editorialize, but I very much want to save this world. More so than usual, that is._

Lup pulls her off to the side after dinner, urging her as if they’re children on the playground and Lucretia is about to be told some deep secret, like Lup having a handful of dirt in her pocket. Lucretia thinks about how that could be true.

“We should partner up,” Lup says, dark, angular eyebrows raised with glee.

Lucretia clears her throat. _Yeah, but,_ “Come again?”

Lup rolls her eyes dramatically—very Taako-like. “For the recital,” she hints, like she’s speaking to a child. “For the presentations we have to do. We should do something together.”

Lucretia hums to fake being in thought, even though the answer is obviously a resounding _yes_. “What do you have in mind?”

“What do _you_ have in mind?”

Lucretia sighs. “Well, to be honest, I do art every single day. I was probably going to write or paint something.”

“Well, I’m no artist,” Lup says, “but I think you should try something different. _We_ should try something different.”

“Like?”

Lup takes both of Lucretia’s hands in hers and swings them side to side. “Oh, I don’t know…Maybe something musical? We’ve been fucking around for sixty years and I still don’t know how to play an instrument.”

Lucretia does. “I’ve kind of hung that hat already, so to speak.” She reverses the movement of their hands so they’re bicycling their clasped hands in the space between them, forward and back, forward and back.

Lup feigns annoyance, heaving a dramatic sigh. “I don’t seen you giving me any ideas, compadre.”

It’s Lucretia’s turn to roll her eyes now. “What do you _like_ to do? You should do something you like.” She bites her lip in thought. “Aren’t you a good dancer?”

The smile she gets in return is absolutely _wicked_. “You could say that.”

Lucretia knows Lup is a good dancer. She’s seen it. It’s one of many things involving Lup’s hips that keep her up at night.

The wicked smile gets an evil glint in her eyes to match, and suddenly Lup has pulled their threaded hands out to the side, placed Lucretia’s other hand on her waist, and rested her own wrist languidly on Lucretia’s shoulder in a loose waltzing position.

“Madam,” Lup says, and Lucretia, thoughtlessly, dips her. She hangs on to the sturdy arch of Lup’s back as Lup giggles, tilting her head back until her hair touches the ground, throat extending gracefully.

Lucretia grins. “My lady.”

-

Lucretia is coming around to thinking that this was a bad idea, a thought mainly borne in the realization of how much time she would be spending touching Lup. Every conservative-minded person who ever thought that dancing led to “suggestive thoughts” was goddamn right. Lucretia memorizes the curve of Lup’s waist in increments—the bottom of her ribs, the slight widening of her hips, the dip in between the two. When she closes her eyes to sleep, she remembers all the times she’s held onto Lup while practicing, creates a mental map of where she’s mostly muscle or mostly fat. Thumb pressing into Lup’s stomach, feeling the softness over a layer of lean strength, Lucretia’s hand fits perfectly as if by design.

Sometimes as they sway, they get lost in it, distracted. Their eyes meet for far too long and Lup toys with the short hairs at the nape of Lucretia’s neck. She’s trained herself not to shiver.

The years have calmed her significantly. She thinks she could live an eternity in Lup’s sunshine, feeling nothing-but-something, satisfied with her comfort in perpetual dissatisfaction. Lucretia doesn’t have a compulsion to get what she wants anymore; she doesn’t want anything at all. She does her best to spend time with her found family, and when that involves Lup, or Lup kissing her cheek just like she used to, Lup holding her hands, Lup falling asleep with her, then that’s just fine. But she refuses to let herself seek it out.

So imagine Lucretia’s surprise when Lup abruptly pulls from her arms mid-dance, eyebrows knit together, striding over to the record player and ending the song with a decisive _skrrtch_.

“Um…” Lucretia mumbles, arms hanging in the air a second before recognizing their emptiness and falling to her sides.

“We have to talk.” Lucretia can’t remember the last time she saw Lup so determined over anything but the Hunger or a petty argument with her brother.

“Uh, do we?” Lucretia very carefully schools her tone.

Lup looks suddenly furious; Lucretia feels like she can see an actual grey cloud rolling in, across the room, to position itself squarely above Lup’s head, where her ears are pinned back like a pissed-off cat, and her hands are on her hips like she’s giving Lucretia a scolding.

“What are you talking about, _do we_?” Lup looks at Lucretia like she’s never been told something so ridiculous in her life. “ _Yes, we do!_ We’ve needed to talk for the better part of what, half a fucking century? Longer?”

Lucretia feels like she’s in a dream, chest heavy and light all at once. She’s stunned into silence, but another person’s silence has never stopped Lup before.

“Where do you get off, huh? Looking at me the way you do? Writing about me all the time? Inviting me to _hug_ thirty hours a week under the guise of _work_?” Lup laughs, short and cruel. “And then never saying a word to me?”

Lucretia can say, sincerely, that “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” even though in the same breath, somewhere deep inside, four dolls deep, she does know. “Wait, how do you know I write about you?” Oh, god! Oh, my god! Nice one Luce!

Lup’s high cheekbones are flooding with red, the tips of her twitching ears going along with the color shift. “ _That’s fucking hilarious!_ ” Lucretia carefully files away the way her voice trembles. “It’s fucking _hilarious_ that you think I don’t talk to my _twin brother,_ or that I don’t have fucking eyes of my own for that matter! Your eyes have _nary strayed_ from me in seventy fucking years!”

Lucretia can’t find her words; the tips of her fingers have gone numb.

“You—you don’t kiss me on the beach, okay, that’s fine, then I pull away to get you to chase and you never chase, okay, that hurts but maybe that’s fine, too. But ten years later, you don’t get to stare at me with those big eyes the way you _literally_ —“ every syllable of ‘literally’ enunciated off Lup’s teeth like daggers “—just did. Just did, two fucking minutes ago! You’re fucking infuriating!”

Lup’s breathing is very calculating, modulated, and Lucretia thinks it’s absolutely wild that this planet is so much like home that she managed to get on their version of Fantasy Punk’d. Her soul is floating somewhere a couple feet up and behind her, staring over her own shoulder and watching Lup fume as if through a screen, a fog.

“Don’t you have something to say to me?!” and despite Lup’s fury and blustering, her eyebrows are turned up in the middle, hurt. “Fucking say something, Lucretia!”

Full-name treatment and all…Lucretia takes a long time to focus and bring herself back down into her body, the unreality of all of this leaving the only grounding factor to be the emotional pain somewhere behind her heart and toward her stomach.

“Answer me.” Tears hang off Lup’s long eyelashes and her ears tilt down like a kicked puppy.

“I…” Lucretia smacks her dry mouth, licks her chapped lips, tries to focus over the noise in her ears. “I don’t…” Quietly, she pinches her left hand with her right. Not waking up. “You’re with Barry.” Is that really all she could muster?

“Barold? Really?” Lup’s tears overflow, every bit as emotional as her brother. “All of this over _Barry?_ ”

Before now, Lucretia wouldn’t have believed whoever told her that the very centrifuge of all her emotional turmoil for the better part of a century could get invalidated so fast, in such a short sentence.

“We broke up,” Lup says shortly. “We broke up before the beach.”

“I never even knew you were really together,” Lucretia tries, feet kicked out from under her. “You never told me. You never tell me anything.”

Lup sneers. “The only person who knows me better than you is Taako, who has known me for literally every minute of his fucking _life_ , but nice try, Lucy.”

Lucretia shakes her head, dazed. “It doesn’t feel like it. Lup…I’m not a mind reader. How was I supposed to know?”

“Back in the day,” Lup changes the subject like a riptide, “when we were what, like, a hundred and twenty? Well, like twenty in your case. Fresh on the boat. You felt this way then.”

Oh god, Lucretia hates it to the core that the feelings she thought she’d been so smooth about hiding, so practiced, self-control and self-regulation she’d prided herself on, are so obvious to the very person she was supposed to be fooling that they aren’t even a question. She powers through.

“Yes, I did.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Lup shakes her head, long curls bouncing around her face and shoulders. “Who wouldn’t say anything?”

“From my first day at IPRE,” Lucretia says. “When you and Taako acted too good to talk to me, but eventually let me sit with you.”

Lup’s head is still shaking.

“…You...” A deep, measured breath. “…You were a good friend then, a cute girl like a million other cute girls. But I saw you…training, and doing your job, whipping fire around you like it was nothing. So _competent_ , hiding under your pink hair and your pretty face so no one would take you seriously, and not just for your protection, _no_ , but because you think it’s _fun_ when people learn the hard way how sharp you are.”

Lup’s bottom lip quivers, but she stays silent, a once-in-a-lifetime miracle.

“You still do that, you know,” Lucretia continues, and in another life she would’ve been too anxious to hold Lup’s eyes through all of this, but something now—maybe her hidden old age—allows her to keep up that contact she has always craved but was too scared to take. “Whenever you get in a fight, even if it’s with a monster or something who can’t possibly understand the point. You stand at the back and let Magnus think he’s the strongest one on the field, let your enemies think he is, until unassuming beautiful _you_ is the one incinerating them. I get it, Lup, I do.”

Lup mouths _beautiful_ , speechless, tears falling into her mouth, clumsy, ugly.

“I get it, and I get your thought process now. I’ve been with the two of you long enough, you’ve told me enough about your past. I get it. I get biting the hand that feeds, I get the touchiness, I get your cautiousness.” Floodgates open. “So then, if you get that I get it, you’ll also get that it made sense for me to wait for you to warm up and come around.”

Lucretia’s laugh is hard and joyless. “So imagine my surprise when Barry _fucking_ Bluejeans…” She finds herself getting into dangerous territory, into the language that comes out of smitten guys, rejected guys. That’s not her; that’s not how she feels. She re-evaluates and tries again. “I wasn’t going to make a move until you were totally comfortable with me. In my mind, all I saw was that you got more comfortable with him first, so end of story.”

Lup is staring at the ground, mountain of hair falling over her face, unreadable.

“I’m so tired, Lup. I’ve been exhausted since the first cycle. When I sleep, I see you dying, I see the nothingness that I saw after _I_ died. I see our friends and family getting swallowed up by some asshole in a suit. I see the astral plane and I see a million hands trying to drown me. Sleep doesn’t do it for me anymore, but being around you…recharges those batteries. It keeps me going. I couldn’t have stayed here so long without you. I’m strong, I know, but I’m not like you…I’m not able to keep up my mood no matter what. That’s all you. All the strength I have to smile is from you.”

Lucretia’s nervous energy drains out of her, legs numbed and heart full with something indescribable, and she hates the sob that comes out of Lup like it was ripped.

“I don’t know why I didn’t kiss you. Well, I do know why, and that’s because I thought you guys were still together, or I was your rebound, or your rebellion, or something. But Lup, I wanted to, so, so bad.” Lucretia bites her lip and continues. “So that brings me back around to you. Why didn’t you tell me?”

She watches Lup breathe, gives her time to process all the guts Lucretia just spilled. Lup squares her shoulders like the soldier she is, wipes the back of her hand roughly over her eyes, and looks up at Lucretia, jaw set and eyes blazing.

“Th—“ She has to stop and clear her throat. “Things went on so long that I thought you didn’t like me. I kissed you like, every day, Lucy, for the first ten years, and nothing? Nothing? Not a word? I’m not a mind reader, either. I didn’t know what I had to do to get you to fucking _talk_ , and up until about ten minutes ago, I still didn’t.”

Lup shakes with the sobs that she keeps inside, but she keeps going, watching Lucretia cry silently. “Barry was a bad idea. I know that. He got way more out of it than I did, and I had to stop it, because your first idea is always your best one on a gut check, and every time I checked my gut there you were! There you fucking were.” She shakes her head like she can’t believe any of this. “I’m a shitty person, Lucy. I suck… I couldn’t stand being alone. It’s not even just him that I did this to…I did it to you. And both of you are so…so q-quiet, and nice, and g-good people, and I’ve been a _fucking_ bitch my whole life, and—“

“You aren’t,” Lucretia says, throat thick, not even stopping to consider whether she should say that or not.

Lup brushes her hair back roughly, hooking it behind her long ear and staring at Lucretia, momentarily wordless.

Lucretia moves toward her slowly, hands out in a conciliatory gesture, a universal _I come in peace_. Lup doesn’t back away; in fact, when Lucretia puts her hand on Lup’s cheek, Lup moves both her hands to hold Lucretia’s wrist in place, leans her face into it heavily, nuzzles it. Muffled into the skin of Lucretia’s palm, she mumbles, “I don’t deserve you.”

“Shut up.” Lucretia places her hand on Lup’s waist like she has so many times in the last couple weeks. She squeezes it, right where she’s most ticklish, and Lup’s nails bite into her wrist when she jumps and giggles, squirming away from the touch, but not with any real fight in her. Rather than keeping up the tickling, Lucretia runs her hand softly up and down the length of Lup’s waist, tracing her favorite curve, below her ribs to her hip, up and down, up and down. Regulates her own breathing until Lup mimics her, finally catching her breath. A few undignified hiccups later, Lup is all but calm.

“You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met,” Lucretia whispers, watching Lup’s huge eyes take her in, her snot all over Lucretia’s hand. “Feelings are messy. People make mistakes with each other. That doesn’t negate all the good you do.”

Lup kisses Lucretia’s palm, carefully choosing somewhere that _does not_ have her snot on it, and even amongst the gross factor, Lucretia finds the sensation settling somewhere in her lower stomach. “Ditto,” she says, grinning open-mouthed, tongue digging in the gap between her teeth, a nervous tick.

“He forgives you by now,” Lucretia says, and means it. She’s observant. He’s toned down the longing looks, learned to laugh with her and all of them again.

Lup hums in assent, an absent sound. Her eyes flit around Lucretia’s face.

“I forgive you.”

Lup’s eyes sharpen into hers, gazing down the inch she has on Lucretia like a hawk.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Lup says, and Lucretia giggles and says, “You’re right. There was nothing to forgive.”

Lup mumbles, “That’s not true, but whatever,” and drifts off again, staring at Lucretia for just a couple seconds, until a new thought comes to her. “Taako told me.”

“Fucking—“ Lucretia’s eyebrows fly up. “Fucking… _really_! After everything…and he—he promised!”

“To be fair,” Lup grins, tilting her head thoughtfully, “I’m a mind reader _sometimes_ …and there wasn’t much of an everything at that point…It takes a _minimum_ of fifty years to understand Taako. I know that from experience.”

Lucretia pinches Lup’s waist with no real intent. “He’s not the only one who it takes fifty years to understand.”

Lup finds this hysterical. “Okay, but you’ve had more than that by now. What do you think of me, huh? What am I thinking?”

“You want to kiss me,” Lucretia replies.

“Busted,” Lup giggles. She goes silent, and her eyes lose some focus staring at Lucretia’s mouth, her teeth sinking into her plush bottom lip.

Lucretia licks her lips, and Lup mimes the motion unconsciously. “What about me? Can you read my mind?”

Instead of responding, Lup keeps only one hand around Lucretia’s wrist, and the other wanders around to her lower back, pushing Lucretia gently, suggestively, into her space. Lucretia doesn’t even have time to gasp before their lips meet, and god, _fuck_ , it’s everything she’s thought about for so long, the line she never thought she’d get to cross after all this time. She hums into Lup’s mouth, her hand on Lup’s waist sliding up to rest between her shoulderblades, sharp and strong, right behind her rapid heartbeat. Lup’s breasts pressing against hers is the softest thing she’s ever felt, and she’s frolicked in a field of literal fur, year forty-three.

The kiss hardens suddenly, Lup worrying Lucretia’s bottom lip gently between her teeth, drawing a shocked gasp, taking advantage of Lucretia’s open mouth. Lup’s tongue in her mouth feels like…she doesn’t know what it feels like. She tastes like strawberries, lip balm; Lucretia tangles her fingers in Lup’s hair, sharply, pulling their faces closer together, noses knocking together clumsily. Lucretia can’t find it in herself to give a shit. Lup is all around her, above her and inside her heart and inside her mouth and pressed against her head to toe. She feels like a deer in the headlights. She feels like the void of death and the blinding light of being revived all at once.

Lup’s hair, soft and clean and fluffy, smelling of soap and something fruity and sweet, takes the brunt of Lucretia’s waves of emotion, and when Lucretia tugs on it, Lup only groans. When her tongue leaves Lucretia’s mouth and she takes her time lapping at, kissing Lucretia’s top lip, then her bottom lip, Lucretia’s breath trembles in the space between them. Both their mouths hanging open, swollen, saliva-slicked, the both of them gasping for air, Lup presses her lips to Lucretia’s over and over again, a come-down, a new rising melody. Sunlight dances behind Lucretia’s closed eyelids; she hangs on for her life as Lup’s hand smooths down her ass, cupping it gently, drawing her closer by it.

When Lup presses their hips together, hard against her in the space between Lucretia’s belly button and cunt, the exact spot where the tingles that have been ravaging her have settled, Lucretia nearly loses it. She wants to pin her down. She wants to put her mouth on every inch of her. She wants a million things that she’s pictured a million times; the knowledge that she’s allowed to _want_ those things now is something that would’ve bowled her over had she not been hanging onto Lup like a barnacle.

She pulls back and the flush settling on Lup’s cheekbones appears to be permanent. Her ears twitch, eyelashes fluttering, more beautiful than any sunset or flower world, and Lucretia wants so much that she can’t put it into coherent words. She can’t put it into coherent feelings. She doesn’t know how to _ask_ for _everything_ —

“Is this occupado?”

Oh, god. Other people still existed. One of them was Magnus, one of them was knocking on the door of the studio where they stood, still in their workout clothes, no music on to speak of, covered in tears and snot and each other’s spit.

“Uh—um,” Lup clears her throat, taking the reins. “Yeah! Yeah, it is. We’re in here.”

Lucretia can hear Magnus’s weight fall against the other side of the door. “We were supposed to eat fifteen minutes ago. We were trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m _sooo_ hungry, Lup. This is on you. You, singularly.”

“We’ll be right out,” Lup calls, and the juxtaposition of Lucretia being this soaking wet with Magnus mere feet away is the worst thing she’s ever thought about, ever, probably.

“C’monnnn,” he complains.

“Just go ahead and eat, dude!” Lup rolls her eyes, and the familiarity of the gesture after all of this makes Lucretia laugh.

Magnus sighs on the other side of the door, but they hear his lumbering gait as he makes his way back to the team, leaving them alone again.

Lup and Lucretia just stare at each other for a few moments, dissolving slowly into giggles.

“God,” Lup mutters, swiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve. “Jesus, Lucy, you’ve got it.”

Lucretia giggles, carefree, light, airy, a cloud in her chest. It’s been so long since she felt like the same idealistic girl who’d taken this job in the first place. She buries her face in Lup’s shoulder, but she’s really just wiping the spit off on her shirt. “We have to do this dance like, tomorrow.”

“Don’t _remind_ me.”

“We have to get dinner. I haven’t eaten all day.”

“ _Lucy_ …” Lup, ever the drama queen, does her best impression of someone being tortured.

“We already waited this long,” Lucretia says as Lup leans down to rest her head on Lucretia’s shoulder as well.

“I’m really hungry, too…” Lup says into her shoulder, defeated.

“Then off we go. C’mon.” Lucretia grabs her hand, drags her back to their family.

Taako doesn’t make a production out of how obviously he knows, but he does rearrange Lup’s bangs where Lucretia had spent significant time tugging, and pats her face patronizingly.

-

_A lot happened tonight. We danced. We kissed. We celebrated. We won._

-

Lucretia, in all honesty, did not win anything in particular. For all she knew, the Hunger was still dancing at the edges of the space this civilization carved out. For all she knew, it waited outside the doors of the vast, blue-lit auditorium; it lurked inside the open, yawning mouth of the cave behind where she and Lup swayed for everyone to see.

She has had many anxious moments in her life. Lucretia has spent, over the last eighty-some-odd years that she’s been alive, fretting until she lost the chance to act. Lup won’t allow that.

It’s set up in such a way that she will enter from one side and Lup from the other, meeting in the middle, coalescing. It is a distant thought inside Lucretia that this setup was stupid. She got the bum side, too; her friends aren’t there to cheer her forward like Lup, and it is only with the single-minded determination that she won’t leave Lup alone on stage in front of all these people—because there is no doubt Lup would do it—that she moves forward.

The applause for the two of them is thunderous, and Lucretia can distinctly hear Merle shouting, “Those are my girls!” from somewhere in the crowd.

It’s Lup, not the anxiety, that takes Lucretia’s breath away.

Lup’s dress is white, gauzy, sheer everywhere save for the vague white shapes of a bra and underwear beneath. It hugs her breasts, her sides, her hips, makes her legs look even longer, and Lucretia absolutely can’t fucking breathe, can’t move to save her life. Lup approaches her, hair up in such a way that only a select few curls frame her soft face, hand outstretched. Lucretia takes it. Her nails are pink. She forgets that she’s in front of hundreds of strangers, every one of their five friends, and pulls her into a kiss.

The audience roars.

At the end, after their offering is accepted, Taako will sit them down at the table around shots and tell them about how it wasn’t even their fucking dance, it was their fucking _feelings_ , eugh, that got beamed into his head like he was getting abducted.

-

“So is sixty something years too long to _court_ before deciding to marry? In this episode, we let the crowd decide, on—“

“Marry is a strong word,” Lucretia says, rolling her eyes, like it isn’t filling her chest with something huge and horrid and bright.

“Keep telling yourself that, baby,” Lup giggles, arm wrapped around her shoulders. “The suit is cute on you and I know for a _fact_ that I look amazing in white.”

Lucretia bites her lip thoughtfully as she searches the many too-small inside pockets of her fine-tailored women’s-men’s-wear for the key to her dorm back on the Starblaster. Lup was the only one who was lucky enough to have changed into her pajamas already. “If we got married….hmm.” Her stupid tipsy hands can’t get the key to go the right way, and Lup just _has_ to be watching her. “If we got married, we’d both wear dresses.”

“Ooh, I like that.” Lup is running her hands up and down Lucretia’s sides in a way that is _extremely_ distracting. Using a key has never felt like such an accomplishment before. “What’s yours like? ‘Cause I’m pretty dead-set on this one, sugarplum.”

“Yours is all skinny…So mine is poofy. It’s got a heart-shaped neckline and it’s sleeveless and it poofs out in a really obnoxious way so not only _I_ trip on it all night, but _you_ do, too.”

“That’s really cute…,” Lup says, very engaged with the hollow under Lucretia’s ear as she fights to get the door open.

When Lucretia finally opens her bedroom door, moonlight from the _real actual earth_ they’re on streams through the huge window in her ceiling, to the point that she doesn’t even need to turn on the lights. They’ll stumble on her shit on the floor either way; may as well keep the mood lighting.

“I’d trip on your wedding dress any day, Lucy.”

“That’s sweet of you,” Lucretia replies, and with her brain chewing on the idea of marrying Lup, she turns on her heel to pin her up against the closed door.

“Oh…” As Lucretia’s eyes adjust to the dim light, she sees the way Lup bites her bottom lip. She knows Lup can see in the dark, just not how well; she wonders if Lup can see the hunger lighting up her face, heating her cheeks, like she would if it were daylight. Lup is so _warm_ in her arms. “Hey,” Lup whispers, and Lucretia’s mouth is on hers all over again before either of them can get another word in.

Lup melts against the doorway, Lucretia’s leg between hers, wholly pinned, wholly hers. Lucretia has—Lucretia has never touched Lup’s boobs before. That’s a wild thought. All this time…and Lucretia finally slides her hand up the other girl’s waist, brushing the underside of her breast, cupping it gently. Lup sighs happily, and Lucretia doesn’t waste the opportunity to lick her way into Lup’s mouth.

Lup tugs at the lapels of Lucretia’s suit jacket until Lucretia lets Lup smooth her hands up her shoulders, sliding it off and onto the floor, and Lucretia should’ve known that Lup wouldn’t be kept passive for long.

Her wandering hands edge around Lucretia’s breasts, her chunkier waist, her hips, end up toying with the buttons on her blouse, lips never moving away from Lucretia’s. Lucretia cups Lup’s face as she’s guided gently backward, tripping over her clothes and shit on the floor until the backs of her knees touch the edge of her bed. She falls into a sitting position, staring up at Lup, who grins her most beautiful and bright and leans forward until Lucretia has nowhere to go but to lay back.

“You look yummy,” Lup mumbles as she stuffs her face between Lucretia’s breasts.

Lucretia laughs breathlessly, staring up at the night sky through her ceiling window as Lup scatters kisses up and down her neck, over her boobs, between them. She tugs on the pins in Lup’s hair until they give up, sending pink-tipped curls flying over the both of them. Lucretia squeezes her with her thighs, feeling Lup’s giggles between her knees as she makes a show of biting the rest of her buttons undone. Lucretia can see just a faint dusting of the freckles across the bridge of her sharp nose, her earrings reflecting moonlight. Lup presses kisses to her stomach, leaning up to untuck Lucretia’s shirt from her _shapely_ slacks.

Lucretia gasps, Lup humming happily, as her pants are unbuttoned unceremoniously, high waist tugged down so Lup can nuzzle and kiss the space between her belly button and panties.

“This is a really good spot on you,” she comments, like she’s talking about her front lawn, something mundane.

“Th-thanks…?” Lucretia laughs, breathless, sparks singing from where Lup’s lips touch her to curl somewhere deep in her gut.

Lup kisses the waist of her panties, making a suggestion of movement to peel off her pants. “Is it okay if I…?”

“Yeah. Shit. Oh my god.” Lucretia arches her hips up as Lup tugs at her slacks, the both of them giggling when they get caught on her calves and Lup has to actually exert force to get them off, Lucretia squealing for her to just _ow, wait a second, she’ll help_ , but she’s in nothing but her underwear and Lup’s atop her again in no time.

Lucretia, however, isn’t about to just lay there. She grabs Lup by the hair, twisting it to hear her moan, throwing her arms around her neck and her legs around her hips and tugging her down.

Lup is totally, completely acquiescent to letting herself be kissed. She soaks up every kiss like a sunflower, bracing herself on her elbows on either side of Lucretia’s head.

Lup pulls back and pants, “So, how do you want me?” pressing her forehead to Lucretia’s and rubbing their noses together.

Lucretia takes a moment of serious deliberation. “Under me.” Even in the limited light, she can see Lup’s eyes go hazy as she nods and takes the direction. Lucretia tries to be as helpful as possible, untangling herself as Lup clambers off her and onto the pillows, knees bent, reaching for Lucretia’s hand and pulling her with her.

Lucretia takes the same position as she did by the door—her favorite one, for the record—with her knee pressed up between Lup’s legs, pinning her to the bed. She licks Lup’s swollen lips, the gap between her teeth, presses Lup’s tongue down in her mouth until she moans and squirms. Lup’s hands are on her waist, fingertips edging under her panties if only slightly. Lucretia’s kisses move from Lup’s mouth, over her sharp cheekbones and soft cheeks, listening to her pant as she runs her tongue from where her long ear meets her temple all the way to the tip. It twitches under her tongue and Lup’s grip on her ass is bruising, pushing her down to meet the involuntary buck of Lup’s hips.

“Oh my god, Lucy, oh my _god_ ,” she moans, long nails digging in.

Lucretia feels burning hot all over, everywhere they touch, hell, everywhere they _aren’t_ touching. She pulls back, gasping for air, and Lup stares up at her, open-mouthed, golden hair fanned out behind her on the pillow, looking at Lucretia like she hung the moon. Like Lucretia is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

Something like tears suddenly wells up in Lucretia’s eyes, and she sits up and starts fighting to get Lup’s shirt and bra off, ineffectual, trying her best to distract herself from the feelings that are welling up inside her like a volcano. _Crying during sex is a bad look, Lucretia_.

Lup helps her out, leaning up as well. She knows Lucretia is having a moment; she kisses her through it while four clumsy hands wage war on the clasp of Lup’s bra. She throws it across the room, falling back down on the pillow with a huff, smiling up at Lucretia. Her breasts fill out to either side, at gravity’s mercy, and Lucretia is about to have a panic attack, because she never thought she would be here, and it’s more than she ever could’ve imagined.

“You’re so much,” she whispers unintentionally.

Lup giggles, and plays with the straps of Lucretia’s bra. “Have you seen yourself?” She bites her lip.

Lucretia doesn’t even give her a chance to ask; she doesn’t even bother to completely undo the clasp before it’s being tossed aside just like Lup’s was. She watches light reflect off Lup’s irises and she fights blushing.

“God, Lucy, you’re so gorgeous,” she breathes, and moves her knee between Lucretia’s legs, tipping her forward until she’s holding herself over Lup’s mouth. Lup flicks her tongue across Lucretia’s nipple, gently at first, rolling it around as it tightens. The sensation rockets through Lucretia, head to toe, like a tuning fork, and she grinds up against Lup’s soft thigh thoughtlessly. Lup’s hand wanders, traveling up Lucretia’s thigh, pushing her panties aside, stroking feather-light across her folds. Lucretia learns, very quickly, not to be embarrassed by how wet she is; she presses her hips down into Lup’s hand, looking for more friction, and is rewarded with a finger sliding in her casually.

Lucretia groans, broken.

“Jesus,” Lup whispers. “I want you to sit on my face.”

Every thought that isn’t _oh, god, hell yes, shit, yes, wow, damn, okay,_ leaves Lucretia’s head like so much smoke and she can’t get her fucking panties off fast enough.

“Whoa, eager,” Lup giggles, helping her keep her balance as she removes her underwear one leg at a time.

“Eager?” Lucretia leans down and worries Lup’s bottom lip between her teeth. “I wanna fuck your mouth,” she breathes, pressed nose to nose.

Lup’s ears pin back, taking her hair with them, and Lucretia can feel the air between their mouths be displaced as she gasps.

“That okay?” Lucretia whispers.

“Yeah, yeah. Fuck yeah.” Lucretia runs her hands over Lup’s breasts as she’s guided by hands on the backs of her thighs to rest her knees on either side of Lup’s head. She helps Lup to fold a pillow behind her neck, get more comfortable; she spends a long time hovering over her shoulders, stroking her hair, her ears, wishing she was in kissing range but settling for…

Lup’s fingers are way longer than hers. This is something she noticed before but is only just learning the reality of as two of them slide in her easily, to the knuckle, so wet and open that Lup doesn’t even have to try. In fact, Lucretia knows that she isn’t trying; her other hand is holding onto Lucretia’s thigh, guiding her forward, beautiful lips parted. Lucretia can’t breathe. Lup’s tongue touches her clit for the first time gently, experimentally, and she absolutely _cannot_ breathe.

Lup’s tongue at first moves up and down, poking her clit with the tip, and while it’s nice, she gasps and tugs on Lup’s hair and goes, “Wait, n—mm—not like that.”

God, Lup’s chin is wet when Lucretia pulls back. “What do you like, baby?” The fingers inside her leave to stroke her clit, trying a few directions, until—

Lucretia gasps, choking, eyes squeezing shut. It’s almost too much, so of _course_ Lup keeps doing it.

“Ohh, I see…,” Lup muses, strumming her fingers over Lucretia side-to-side, pressing harder on the sides. “I gotcha, honey.” And then Lup, gorgeous Lup, does that with her _tongue_ , and Lucretia…

Lucretia’s fists in her hair are _nothing_ but gentle, and Lup _loves_ it, nails digging into Lucretia’s ass, fingers moving to her entrance, three now, stretching her…Lup strokes her with her tongue, nose pressed to Lucretia’s pelvis, and does a very good impression of someone who’s enjoying drowning, making all these noises like she does at _dinner_ , for god’s sake…

For all Lucretia knows, she’s the one who’s dying; she plays with Lup’s ears, her hair, brushing her bangs away and then making a fist in them, making Lup pull away to gasp.

“Please…Lup…,” she gasps, and Lup smiles against her clit.

Lucretia’s thighs burn with the exertion of holding herself up, her stomach with the exertion of grinding; when Lup’s fingers inside her hook forward, gently, rubbing her insides as they fuck her, she very nearly loses the strength to do both. She doesn’t know where to go, forward to Lup’s mouth, or backward onto her fingers. She gives up, leaning on the headboard, forehead soaked with sweat, passive, letting herself be fucked.

Leave it to Lup to still manage somehow to be in control in this position.

Sensation sings up and down the backs of Lucretia’s thighs, in her cunt and radiating out, touching her from head to toe from the inside. Just the feeling of Lup’s fingers inside her, hitting that spot over and over again with purpose, is a sensation that feels so deep and sharp and bright inside her that she can’t imagine a time before thirty seconds ago, and definitely not a time after.

After sixty-some years, the way that the sparks inside her ricochet around is something wholly unfamiliar, something she could never replicate alone.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Lucretia gasps, and before she knows what’s happening, Lup is humming happily into her clit and Lucretia is _coming_ , god, holy _shit_ …Burning out from her cunt to her stomach, up and down her legs. Her toes go numb. The blood rushes in her ears, her grip on Lup’s hair goes vice-tight, and she grinds down, down, down into Lup’s soft, wet, open, _holy shit_ mouth.

It could’ve been thirty seconds or thirty minutes before she realizes that Lup is gently tapping her hip. Lucretia, embarrassed, rises up with a start, and sees Lup, below her, hair in all directions, face…shining with Lucretia’s cum. Hmm…okay. That’s…a lot. Lucretia gulps and pets her hair, feels Lup’s fingers draw out of her slowly and rub soothingly back and forth between her entrance and her clit.

“Sorry.” It sounds awful; Lucretia has to clear her throat and try again. “Sorry for almost suffocating you.”

Lup’s smile is unabashed, gleeful. “I’m not afraid to die,” she says, eyes dancing despite her fake-solemn tone. She pushes Lucretia toward her face again by her hips, Lucretia giggling like mad, as Lup places a kiss right on her oversensitive clit.

“Mmm _mm…_ ”

“I’m here for a good time, sugar, not a long time.” Lup kisses the inside of her thigh, then licks her fingers clean, Lucretia watching her, face burning, body still singing high.

“Is it bad if I already wanna do it again…?” Lucretia giggles, rubbing her hands over her face, wiping the tears that had sprung up in her eyes at some point despite all her efforts otherwise.

“You aren’t the only one,” Lup mutters, eyes flicking between Lucretia’s face, breasts, settling between her legs and making the circuit all over again.

“Hey…oh my god, my legs really hurt.”

Lup rubs the backs of her thighs, smacks her ass decisively, and helps Lucretia disentangle their limbs so she can fall to the bed beside her.

“Hey, y’know what?”

Lucretia hums in acknowledgment, sleep crawling through all her limbs and settling in her bones, yet still reaching for Lup as Lup reaches for her.

Lup moves to lie on her side facing Lucretia, starting to speak but pausing to wipe her face on Lucretia’s pillow.

“I have to sleep on that, Lup!” Lucretia complains, kicking her leg up in the air, groaning.

Lup giggles wickedly. “I’ve gotta get it off before it dries.” Lucretia huffs as she presses her body along Lucretia’s, burying her face in Lucretia’s neck. Lucretia shivers, suddenly energized again, as Lup digs her nose in the hollow below her ear, kissing, licking, twining their legs together. Lup’s legs are so smooth and long—she’s the only one in this bed who bothers to shave—and, pressed to Lucretia’s hip, she’s hard in her sleep shorts.

“Luce…,” she murmurs into the soft place where Lucretia’s neck meets her shoulder, and Lucretia can’t help herself when she grabs Lup’s hips, urging her on top.

Straddling one of Lucretia’s thighs, bracing her elbows on either side of Lucretia’s head, Lucretia feels…overwhelmed. Lup fills up her vision, pink lemonade hair and glinting eyes and hot, all over, so hot. When she grinds against Lucretia’s thigh, Lucretia feels her brain, trying to slide away with the pleasure, snap back into place all at once, experiencing Lup with renewed clarity, razor sharp. As Lup kisses her, tasting like Lucretia in a way that should’ve been gross but was instead just crazy hot, she digs her tongue in Lucretia’s mouth, imploring. Lucretia’s hands knead Lup’s soft thighs, moving up the curve of her hips, her waist, settling on her breasts.

Lup moans into her mouth, driving her hips down sharply, hot, as Lucretia cups her breasts, rubbing her thumbs over her soft nipples, feeling them harden. She pinches one of them, and Lup gasps into her mouth, a broken sound. _“Fuck_.”

Lucretia feels herself smirk as she tries to pretend she isn’t having more fun than she should be having with Lup pliant and begging in her arms.

“What do you want?” Lucretia asks, peppering Lup’s open, panting mouth with kisses, tilting her own hips up against Lup’s thigh between her legs.

“You.” Lup blinks rapidly, staring down at her. “Mmm, you…” She leans down taking one of Lucretia’s nipples into her mouth, rolling it around with her tongue, and Lucretia feels the control slip out from her fingers.

“That’s vague,” Lucretia laughs, burying her face in Lup’s fluffy hair, kissing her temple.

Lup removes her mouth from Lucretia’s breast, unfortunately. “Touch me…” Lup hesitates only a moment before taking one of Lucretia’s hands, kissing its palm, and placing it on her lower stomach in suggestion. Her breathing labored, she stares down at Lucretia, keeping hold of her wrist as Lucretia combs her fingers lightly through the sparse hairs between her belly button and the waist of her shorts, hair not unlike Lucretia’s own.

“Well, how am I supposed to say no to that,” Lucretia murmurs, absently, biting her bottom lip. Lup follows suit, mimics the action, and her eyes squeeze shut, ears pinning back, as Lucretia edges her shorts down, taking Lup in her hand gently.

She spends an unfair amount of time just circling the tip of her, just to be mean, just for the sake of doing it. Lucretia watches the tension melt out of Lup’s shoulders even as her nails dig into Lucretia’s wrist.

“You’re so wet,” Lucretia marvels, watching the moonlight glint of the string of cum hanging between her finger and Lup’s tip, breaking after a moment.

Lup laughs breathlessly, shaking her head, curls bouncing. “No shit. _Jesus_ , Lucy.”

Lup grabs the waist of her own shorts, tugging them down. Lucretia only lets go of her long enough to help her get the shorts off one leg; Lup lets the other leg stay, hanging off to the side, forgotten, as she smashes her mouth clumsily into Lucretia’s, all teeth at first, open-mouthed panting. Lucretia twists her wrist just right, presses Lup’s cock between her hand and thigh, pays extra attention to the spot just below the tip that makes Lup sob.

“You’re so gorgeous, Lup. I can’t even believe it.” Lucretia squeezes her, rhythmic. “You’re so good for me.”

Lup knits her eyebrows together, leans back, sits up, grinding on Lucretia’s thigh as she touches her; she looks very, _very_ fucked, and Lucretia squeezes her ass gently, breath thoroughly taken away, gazing up at her.

Her hand stops moving, and Lup’s eyes flutter open, frowning a tiny, petulant frown.

“Why’d you stop?” she croaks, planting her hand on Lucretia’s stomach for support.

“Will you get on your back again?”

Lup’s sharp eyebrows fly up. “Don’t have to tell me twice,” she says, and she’s already scrambling, blearily, like she’s just woken up, to lie on the bed beside Lucretia. “What’s on your mind, babe?”

Lucretia mumbles, “This,” and shakily gets to her own knees, crawling up between Lup’s legs and resting on her stomach.

“Oh,” Lup says, dumbfounded, as Lucretia takes her in her mouth. “ _Oh_.”

Lucretia holds her firmly with one hand, stroking, as she licks all around her tip, tasting the sweet, slightly-salty, slightly-bitter, but mostly just _Lup_ flavor of all the clear wetness that Lup just can’t seem to stop dripping. Down here, between Lup’s legs, the elf spread out for her, Lucretia feels surrounded, overwhelmed. The smell of her sweat isn’t gross at all; she feels so close to her, so warm and safe, as she takes Lup into her throat.

“Oh, shit, Lucy, oh my god, _fuck_ , how,” Lup whispers, trailing off, one hand in her own hair, the other prying at Lucretia’s hand, which has a death grip on Lup’s hip. Lucretia hums mindlessly, tunelessly, as she rubs her tongue all along the underside of Lup’s cock, and sure, Lup is technically fucking her mouth, but the way Lup is squirming makes it seem like the other way around.

Lup squeezes her thighs around Lucretia’s ears, muffling the world around them, hardening in her mouth, cum flooding through to the back of her throat as she swallows. Lucretia, distantly, can hear Lup’s melodramatic orgasm, a broken “Lucy,” an arch of her back and an _oh my god_ nearly screamed that makes Lucretia glad her walls are enchanted, soundproofed. Lup cums like she has an audience. To be fair, Lucretia is thoroughly enraptured.

It’s a few moments of gentle licking, spasming, heavy breathing, Lup’s pulse echoing in her femoral artery just beside Lucretia’s ear, before Lucretia is able to pull off her, licking her lips. Lup’s legs fall unceremoniously apart, and Lucretia rests her chin on Lup’s hipbone, observing the way her throat works to swallow, the way Lup is running her hands over her face in disbelief.

“We could’ve been doing that for fifty years,” Lup says, quietly, giggling.

“Sure could’ve.” Lucretia can’t help her grin, and the drama of the moment is broken as Lup grabs her arms, wraps her legs around her lightly, pulls her up until they can share a deep kiss.

“I love your mouth,” Lup mumbles into said mouth, taking a break from licking Lucretia’s tongue and teeth and lips. “I love all of you.”

Lucretia’s heart seizes up, abruptly. The vulnerability of the moment—both of them, totally naked, probably less of an occasion for Lup than for Lucretia, who’s horrified at the idea of taking off her shirt for any reason—dawns on her. Even now, Lup, wet and soft, is still pressed against her hipbone, and their breasts are mushed together in the best way. Lucretia can’t remember the last time she was so close to another person. Her hands are in Lup’s hair, tangled past the point of no return, thumbs rubbing her cheeks, and Lup is looking at her in a way no one has ever looked at her.

“Darling. Peach. Pumpkin. Muffin. Cupcake.” Lup’s eyes are soft, warm, so green even in the limited light. “Moon of my life.”

_The knowledge that the sun itself holds you in its hands, but will never burn you…That’s something that’s too heavy for me to even think about._

Maybe it’s all the years, maybe it’s just the fact that it’s _Lup_ , brilliant and bright, strong and sharp, but Lucretia doesn’t even have the urge to cover her face, get embarrassed. Something huge, like a blimp made of fire, inflates between Lucretia’s heart and her gut, bubbling out of her mouth, in one huge, blustering,

“I love you.”

Lup picks up what she puts down without a beat. “I love you, too,” Lup murmurs, calmer than Lucretia has ever seen her, more subdued, and she plants a decisive kiss on Lucretia’s nose.

Lucretia presses their foreheads together, squeezing her eyes shut tight, and hopes desperately that either they wake up tomorrow and the Hunger is gone, or that they loop forever, endlessly, in a state of perpetual love, for each other, for their giant family, love for the hope they feel for that existence will persevere.

-

_Losing that sixty-fifth world was rougher than usual. I don’t know if it was its similarities to home, the sweet, genuine people we met there, or the fact that it’s where Lup and I…_

_Everyone has been taking it hard, Lup especially. The seventieth world isn’t far now, and she’s determined to solve this in a way that no one understands, not even me, not even Taako. She won’t talk to anyone…I bring her dinner and she takes it and kisses me and closes her door again. She never sleeps anymore, even though she used to love it…I’m worried about her, and I can see in Taako’s eyes that he is too, but neither of us know how to help her._

_She’s too intense for herself sometimes. Single-minded. I’m worried she’ll do something drastic_.

-

Lucretia finds that whatever she had in her mind labelled as “drastic” is nowhere near the breadth of the truth. Necromancy. Of all the things. Lucretia thought she’d been preparing spells, weapons, not a crackpot plan to kill herself and _become_ the weapon.

“We need to at least talk about this first,” Lucretia argues, arms crossed, staring down her nose at Lup.

“I’m here. I’m talking.”

Lucretia counts to ten in her head before she continues. “You have to think this through.”

Lup’s eyebrows knit together, an expression that could mean any number of things on a normal day. Now, Lucretia knows it’s disbelief, frustration. “I can’t believe that you think I haven’t thought this through.”

“I know you’ve been thinking,” Lucretia says. “I’ve watched you think about this for a long time. You’re pushing me away, Lup. I want you to take care of yourself. There has to be a better way.”

“What if this is the best way?” Lup is argumentative, but even still she wrings her hands in her lap. “I can do whatever I want with myself, _Lucretia._ This isn’t up to you. What I do with myself is none of your business.”

“You don’t mean that,” Lucretia says gently, tiptoeing over to stand beside where Lup is seated at her desk, feet kicked up, in a leisurely position but anything but relaxed. She runs her hands through Lup’s hair, scratching gently behind her ear, pressing her nails soothingly into her scalp.

Lup turns her head, presses her mouth to Lucretia’s wrist. “No, I don’t.” A pause. “Bad habits…”

Lucretia sighs and gathers up the edges of her red robe, taking a seat next to Lup’s feet on the desk. “Well, tell me about it. Walk me through it. What’s your plan?”

**Author's Note:**

> this will have a second part :^)
> 
> edit: fixed some minor grammatical and wording errors! i cranked this thing out in 24-ish hours and it shows


End file.
